Gradually Moving Forward!

The other day while I was sitting at the lakefront, I noticed that there was an event going on so I chose to enjoy the lake from my car. I had seen the television news van which indicated that they were there for some coverage. On that sunny Friday afternoon, there was a walk-a-thon taking place and many of the participants had on orange backpacks.

What I did note was the gradual pace in which the people moved. They seemed very relaxed as they moved towards their goal. They were on a mission but they approached it with a sense of ease. Some even pushed baby strollers as they walked as Thich Nhat Hahn would say, ‘in spirit onmindfulness.’

This was a quick life lesson for me. We can move forward in an unhurried pace towards some new goal in a steady, determined fashion. We can fold away the negatives like we do a newspaper we have finished reading. We can try to put it back together but it clearly will not be in its original state. We have extracted what we needed from it, so it is ready for discard.

As in life’s experiences, we take the gold or good from each circumstance; throw away the peelings or scraps; eat and digest the fruits or sustenance inside and grow from the nourishment we have received. Bottom line, in a gradual pace forward, we let go of what or who we don’t need and move on. It may appear as if we are moving effortlessly but that is merely because we have already made the decision to tarry forth.

Those people walking along the lakefront that day had already made up their minds that they were going to spend that Friday walking a marathon. What I witnessed was the result of decisions made earlier. Forward march!

As my mother liked to say, we move ‘from glory to glory.’ We gently close the door on the past. We make sure the hinge on the door catches to assure that is indeed closed. We breathe a sigh of relief that it is over. We feel grateful that we survived it as a sense of quietude surrounds us. We know that something has been completed. We have seen it through and we are ready to move on to the next phase of living.

We focus on gathering up the fruits of our labor during this harvest season. We banish that which no longer well serves us and we can gracefully ease on down the road. We keep our emotions in check and ‘keep our cool emotionally,’ as Catherine Ponder reminds us in TheMillionaire Joshua. Referencing the British, we “Keep Calm and Carry On!”